Posted
by
Roblimo
on Thursday August 29, 2013 @02:32PM
from the less-costly-than-even-a-few-years'-worth-of-textbooks dept.

Giulia D'Amico, Business Development VP for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) talks about the new OLPC tablets, which are now available in the U.S. through Target, Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers, with some of the $150 sales price for each tablet going to support the OLPC project in places like Uruguay, Cambodia, Rwanda, and other countries where a tablet loaded with teaching software is a way better deal than trying to supply all the books a child needs for six or eight years of school. While there are many Android tablets for sale for less than $150, Giulia points out that the OLPC tablets contain up to $300 worth of software. Plus, of course, just as with almost any other Android device, there are many thousands of apps available for it through Google Play. And let's not forget the original OLPC laptop. It has been redesigned, and renamed the OLPC XO-4 and looks much cooler than the original. You can learn more about it through olpc.tv, which has videos from the introduction of both the OPLC tablet and the XO-4 at CES 2013. OLPC has shipped close to 3 million laptops so far, and is working to port Sugar to Android so that the laptop and the tablet can use the same software. One more thing: OLPC is now focusing on software rather than hardware. When the project started at MIT, back in 2006 or so, there was no suitable hardware available. Today, many companies make low-cost tablets and keyboards for them, so there's no real need for OLPC to make its own instead of using existing hardware.

Robin Miller: I am Robin
Miller as you know and I am on the horn with Giulia. Giulia, how do
I say your last name?

Giulia
D’Amico: Giulia D’Amico.

Robin:
Giulia D’Amico of OLPC – One Laptop Per Child. Now it is
a double organization. Giulia is with Miami and it is called

Giulia:
OLPC Association.

Robin:
So in Miami is the OLPC Association. That’s what Giulia D’Amico
is affiliated with. But there is still the OLPC group up at MIT, is
there not?

Giulia:
Yes, we do have two organizations: One is a foundation, and one an
association. Both are nonprofit entities. The reason why the
association was founded at the same time as the foundation was
because of the startup. The foundation is a 501c3; the association is
a 501c4, meaning that we can do end to end logistics of sending a
purchase order to the manufacturing company and distribute laptops,
while the foundation is more focused on research and development and
donations.

Robin:
Also since then, as the association, you have tablets as well, have
you not?

Giulia:
Yes, we actually did develop since the last year the XO tablet, this
one, that is currently selling at Wal-Mart as well as Amazon and
other US retailers. Five years ago, six years ago, when we started
it was impossible to find an inexpensive hardware that was suitable
at a very low cost.

Nowadays,
there are plenty of hardware that are really good quality at a low
cost, so where OLPC is focusing in the last year, is precisely on the
overall user interface and user experience, that it came out with the
XO tablet under the name of XO LearningSystem - that is an ecosystem
of apps, some proprietary that we designed, some others coming from
third parties, like Discovery Communications, Oxford University
Press, Leggo, Common Sense Media, MyCityWay from BMW, and tons of
content coming from UNESCO, the education and cultural arm of the
United Nations.

And
what we have been trying to do is actually to get all this content
together, bilingual English and Spanish, preloaded in the tablet so
that parents or educators do not have to search for it. Because in
Google Play you find hundreds, thousands of apps but you don’t
really know what is good or what is not good for your child. So we
did this overall curation process and we put it there, and one of the
major differences is that first of all, this is the first bilingual
tablet for kids, and at the same time, if you were to purchase all
this content on Google Play we embedded it in the tablet cost, there
is a value of around $300 of apps that are all preloaded for free.

Robin:
So that is why I would pay at Walmart or wherever $150 for the OLPC
tablet rather than $75 for ‘no name’ tablet?

Giulia:
Correct. Not mentioning, so you have $300 worth of content that we
keep on updating. You got the content whole bilingual, it is all set
up with parental controls, so you actually don’t need Internet
you just leave this in the hands of the kids,you set up your parental
controls, and you can be sure that your child is not navigating to
Internet or is not going to go into some weird type of websites or
application, is not going to download the application also, and at
the same time it comes with the cover, that is the hard design that
makes the overall product easy to carry with a handle and at the same
time ruggedized. So in case it falls, nothing is happening. And at
the end of the day, if the child is no longer using the tablet, at
the end of the day, then you can just switch it to the Android mode
and it is a Google certified tablet with a Google Play store that
every adult can use it.

Robin:
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, because to me it makes a
difference between a long time usable tablet and one that does not
use Play store. If it has it then it is good to go.

Giulia:
It is good to go. Exactly. And we will keep on uploading and updating
the software and the current apps so that in order to give even more
stronger experiences for the kids, especially the proprietary ones
that you cannot find on Google Play.

Robin:
I would like to get those on mine maybe, because I have those
grandchildren and they are at the age, well actually they are just at
the beginning of the adult age but I have some littler ones coming
up; in any case

Giulia:
Well, one of the interesting things that you can do with this tablet,
for instance, if you have multiple children using it, you can set up
multiple profiles, each one of them protected with password, and for
each one of them you can decide whether you want to enable or disable
the parental control system. And most importantly for an adult, you
can keep track of what the child is doing. Because we developed an
application that is called the Journal and the Journal is a set of
analytics and dashboards that are telling you for every profile how
much time they are spending on each dream category or under each
topic.

And
they are keeping track on a daily, weekly, monthly usage. We are also
trying to help the adults or the educators by giving them an
understanding on what is the child’s profile in that specific
timeframe. We connected all those analytics over an algorithm that we
designed to the Howard Gardner seven types of multiple intelligences,
basically it is an assessment of the child profile on that specific
timeframe, so whether the child has more logical, or visual or
artistic type of intelligence. And we are giving advice and tips to
the adults if they want to nurture that specific interest, these are
the books or the apps, for free or paid apps, that you can in
addition upload the content that you can get if you want to help your
child.

Robin:
Let me ask you how that works in a much more basic way. Let us assume
we have two young girls: We’ll call them Rache and Marina. Is
there a way to just tell how much time Rache for instance has been on
the tablet today or this week, because if she is sharing it with
Marina, trust me this is important.

Giulia:
No, because as I said, every child has its own profile. So basically,
every child that can get into his or her profile, that is closed,
secured with a password

Robin:
I understand, but can I as a parent say Rache has had the computer
for x number of hours?

Giulia:
Yes, and I can even say that Rache for like the first week, has spent
three hours on math, and two hours on music.

Robin:
I know that’s nice. And that’s wonderful. But job number
one is to prevent: “MUMMYYYY, RACHEL WON’T GIVE ME THE
TABLET IT’S MY TURN!!! “ We have to stop
that, or nothing else makes any difference.

Giulia:
No I understand. Well, I mean ideally, we have always been advocating
one to one, one laptop or one tablet per child.

Robin:
We’d like that.

Giulia:
But in case it is not doable for many scenarios even in the United
States, we make it in a way that everybody in the family can use it
and feel and have the opportunity to keep track of their progress.

Robin:
Okay, let’s forget the United States. One Laptop Per Child was
originally sold to the world as a third world thing – Cambodia,
Latin America, Africa. How does the tablet work in with that?

Giulia:
I would say that the regional mission of OLPC was to provide quality
education opportunities to the majority of children all over the
world, and the reason why Nicholas Negroponte wanted to focus on the
least developed countries was by providing them and by challenging
the world in developing a technology that would be inexpensive-not
cheap-and that would be affordable but it would be very high
technology, durable, ruggedized, solar powered, dual mode screen, sun
readable, but was never done for developing countries. The idea was
that being inexpensive it would have helped developing countries in
actually acquiring this type of technology and overall educational
ecosystem embedded.

So
this is how or this is started, we wanted to prioritize those
countries. How OLPC evolved, as I was stating before, that because
nowadays there are so many apps are out there that are doing a pretty
good job, lots of manufacturing companies that are doing a very good
jobs at a very inexpensive cost, at this moment in time we wanted to
focus on the ecosystem. So it can be this tablet, it can be any other
Android tablet or any Android device, our software will work. And
this specific tablet even if it is retailing in the US, and there is
a reason why, and the reason is because the US market has been
demanding a lot for our devices, but without having a big giant
retailer behind us, it was impossible to get any sort of any logistic
type of distribution. But for every tablet sold, there is a
percentage that will go in charity towards unprivileged communities
around the world and in the US as well, where we will donate tablets,
laptops, and we will provide teacher training and support. So for us
at this moment in time with the tablet it is pretty much fulfilling
the mission – trying to get a really strong software, a really
strong educational ecosystem that can be distributed all over the
place and can reach the majority of the kids no matter the hardware.

Robin:
What about the laptops?

Giulia:
We are still manufacturing laptops. We actually as we
launched the tablet at CES, we also launched two new devices, the
XO-4 and the XO-4 Touch Screen that is the same clam shell that is a
very iconic type of design, and by the overall internal mechanical
engineering that has changed over the years, and the latest one that
we unveiled at CES is a touch screen device with a Marvell ARM dual
core processor. So it is a much faster and robust machine, and also
it is a great combination between a laptop and a tablet because it is
actually a tablet with a keyboard.

Robin:
Kind of like, it reaches over here?

Giulia:
Well, yes, because this is our iconic laptop and the moment that you
open it with the touch screen technology this is a tablet.

Robin:
What does it use? Is that an Android?

Giulia:
No this is on Linux. Still on Linux Operating System.

Robin:
That’s fine. I like Linux. I could hold it up, except it has
got stuff on top of it, I could hold another computer, or I could
boot this one, reboot this one Okay, so what about the
laptops, are they available in the United States?

Giulia:
The laptops are not available on retailing, still we do have projects
in the United States, starting from Miami, that was sponsored by the
Knight Foundation, we have several schools in Charlotte, North
Carolina, and we keep on expanding depending on what basically the
school system is more inclined to. Some schools do prefer tablets,
some others prefer laptops. Both can work and coexist in the same
environment. And this is for instance the case in Uruguay where we
have full saturation with our laptops and they just started with a
new project of 8000 of our tablets, and both devices are going to be
connected to the same servers and are going to be integrated in
existing infrastructure.

Robin:
Software – can they share, or is the software being ported for
both?

Giulia:
We do have part of the Sugar software that is part of the laptop
environment in the tablet, and in our roadmap we are going to
incorporate overall Sugar software in the tablet, so in Android.

Robin:
So things are going back there was a time there when it
seemed like OLPC was going to go away, when it wouldn’t
survive, but it sounds like things are going fairly well - are they?

Giulia:
Things have been always going fairly well for us, because being a
nonprofit and somehow we have all the big giants that are being seen
as a major competitors,
that we reach out to 65 countries, 3 million plus of distributors,
that means that we touch most likely 12 million people's lives, and it is
quite an operation for a small nonprofit of a few people with very
limited resources.

So I take it they've made the entire tablet out of the same material they make airplane black boxes out of? Because I've seen children destroy things that were made out of die-cast titanium without even realizing it, let alone feeling sorry about it.

Better parenting usually prevents things from becoming destroyed I have found. A better parent doesn't hand a child a $800 titanium encased tablet and then ignores them for 8 hours leaving them in a room full of hammers and saws.

So I take it they've made the entire tablet out of the same material they make airplane black boxes out of? Because I've seen children destroy things that were made out of die-cast titanium without even realizing it, let alone feeling sorry about it.

http://olpc.tv/ [olpc.tv] shows the devices they look pretty solid interestingly I notice the thin screen protector doubles as a solar charger, but they look very solid.

Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?

Freudian slip?

Anyway, it's still focused on technology-poor countries. What they've found is that they can subsidize the devices going to these countries further by selling the same product marked up into technology-rich countries, now that they've got their production line up to high capacity. Everything that goes into them, and the design of the products, is aimed at tech-pooor country feedback; tech-rich countries just have the option of paying extra for a piece of the action without affecting the actu

Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?

Freudian slip?

No, I have been working with integrating third party software alot at work.

Anyway, it's still focused on technology-poor countries. What they've found is that they can subsidize the devices going to these countries further by selling the same product marked up into technology-rich countries, now that they've got their production line up to high capacity. Everything that goes into them, and the design of the products, is aimed at tech-pooor country feedback; tech-rich countries just have the option of paying extra for a piece of the action without affecting the actual design decisions (much).

I disagree. The XO tablet is a generic Android tablet and, unlike the XO laptop, the hardware is not designed for use where there is no service center. It is a sealed unit that is hard to repair if it breaks and the primary user surface is glass. The laptop was repairable and more robust and rugged than the tablet.

It is hard to tell if the original business plan was workable or not; it ended up being undercut by Wintel who di

Yes, it was a program put in place to trade laptops for children. That business model struggled, as the management team failed to account for the costs to feed all the children it received in trade. They are hoping that the new business model offering one tablet per child will be more profitable.

Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?

Why can't they do both?

One of the big criticisms of the original plans with the XO-1 was that they didn't mass-produce the thing and get the costs as low as possible. Instead of stacks of XO-1 laptops on the shelves at Wal-Mart, they only let you buy one if you paid double the price for it in the "Give One Get One" program. I don't think they ever really had a prayer of getting the cost under $100 with the original device, b

Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?

Seriously have you had a look at Detroit lately? It is making some places in the so called third world look advanced. I don't think the Detroit public schools can afford to hand out iPads. Besides what good is a school system that relies upon system locked text books and expensive proprietary devices. I can see that standard text books can easily become something which are operating system agnostic and any move to make electronic text book media exclusive to one operating system like Apple or Microsoft sho

OLPC has organized this content into Dreams to match the aspirations of children 3-12 years old. Each dream features a potential career and related applications organized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced skill sets.

... there are many Android tablets for sale for less than $150, Giulia points out that the OLPC tablets contain up to $300 worth of software...

Is anyone buying this? I doubt very much that there is any of that supposed $300 worth of software that there isn't as good or better free alternatives for. And this was supposed to be an organization that was based on free and open software. As the summary points out, there are many Android tablets available at far less than $150. And those are produced by "for profit" companies, not supposed non-profits (although I expect some pay their chief executives less that the OLPC executives skim off the top).

I see this as just another OLPC fail, at least as long as your not one of the ones cashing those OLPC paychecks.

OLPC years ago published articles that the 3 core parts of the project:

1) A logistics of delivery of expensive items to the truly impoverished2) A hardware platform designed to be inexpensive and usable by children in substandard working conditions3) An open ecosystem of learning software

were in natural conflict. They hadn't realized it at the time but now the did and so they forked 1,2 and 3 into separate projects.

Is anyone buying this? I doubt very much that there is any of that supposed $300 worth of software that there isn't as good or better free alternatives for. And this was supposed to be an organization that was based on free and open software. As the summary points out, there are many Android tablets available at far less than $150. And those are produced by "for profit" companies, not supposed non-profits (although I expect some pay their chief executives less that the OLPC executives skim off the top).

What next, are you going to tell me that when I buy a cheese slicer with a dozen attachment doohickeys from an informercial for $19.95, it's not actually a $300 value?

Down to $50...but how many run an old version of android? And this is off the shelf at a big box retail outfit.

Yea, there are plenty of tablets available with pretty dated versions of Android. And it really bugs me when I see big name players like Samsung and Lenovo not update their Android software. But there are a lot of Android makers and many who offer Android Jellybean 4.2.x., many well under the $100 mark. That others still sell older stuff hardly justifies the supposed non-profit OLPC gang in

well.. perhaps "all the books a child needs for six or eight years of school" is categorized as "software" ?.. in that case, it might be a pretty good deal. Dead tree versions can be pricey.. definitely more than 300 bucks, if you consider the required books for 8 years of schooling.

When the original OLPC came out (I did manage to get one during G1G1) everyone had been laughing at the concept of a sub-$200 laptop even being possible, much less usable. The entire netbook/chromebook market segment exists because it was pioneered by OLPC. I'm glad to see that they're porting Sugar to Android, but I wonder if the tablets are going to be as robust as the laptops have been. Hopefully they'll be field serviceable, the way that thousands of kids all over the world are servicing OLPCs in the

We recently got two 7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 tablets for our kids. We splurged for the Otterbox cases because those tend to be very sturdy. (We have one on our iPad and it survived a pretty decent fall with no damage.) The cost for a Tab 2 and Otterbox case? About $210. Looking the specs over, the OLPC model seems to have a slightly faster processor, less MP rear camera, and more MP front camera. Otherwise, they look pretty similar.

When I read the parental control section, it scared the shit out of me. Are we learning our kids today that total surveillance is good? That Big Brother is part of the family? I would rather have that parents pry the device from their children's hands and lock it away instead of conditioning them to be monitored always.

No, parental control software is to be used for kids who are old enough to use a device on their own, but not old enough to completely understand that certain actions can get them into trouble. My oldest son is 10 years old. He doesn't need constant supervision when he uses he tablet (and we couldn't constantly supervise him if we wanted to). However, partly due to his age and partly because he has Asperger's Syndrome, he's very naive about how the world works. He understands intellectually that there a

Last year my sister-in-law in Peru finally retired the Windows 95 laptop that we gave her in 2001, when we gave her a new laptop. My niece is still using the second-hand laptop that we gave her in 2006. IOW, they'll last a frack of a lot longer there than they would here, people will treat them with care because they're (comparatively) expensive and important.

Last year my sister-in-law in Peru finally retired the Windows 95 laptop that we gave her in 2001, when we gave her a new laptop. My niece is still using the second-hand laptop that we gave her in 2006. IOW, they'll last a frack of a lot longer there than they would here, people will treat them with care because they're (comparatively) expensive and important.

I am writing this on an IBM T42 that was sold to me by the Gov of BC for 75 bucks. LOL It has lasted and works better than today's netbooks, at least running Linux. When I go to a coffee shop and type out a document or send an e-mail or phone someone with Google talk, use Google Earth to map out a trip or whatever like it was a more expensive newer i5, it amazes my boss who struggles doing the same things with his slow as a dog Sony 3 year old piece of crap with Windows 7.

I travel a lot around the world in 3rd world countries helping the poor. I don't think their challenge is in manufacturing or getting these out to the field. The challenge will be finding a way for the tablets to not be immediately sold for cash when the people are in need of food and medicine to survive. Heck, pass these out for free in the 1st world conditions and where will they end up. I'm sorry, but it would be nice to help the kids and schools and teachers, but none of these will be in a classroom 1 year after they are given out.

I travel a lot around the world in 3rd world countries helping the poor. I don't think their challenge is in manufacturing or getting these out to the field. The challenge will be finding a way for the tablets to not be immediately sold for cash

Bill *Fuck your charity* Gates *I don't have to pay tax* agrees with you. I don't think you realise how offensive you are being, OLPC was born from from real world observation, and the benefits computing could bring first hand.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1240339 "In 1980, Sheik Yamani of OPEC funded a center to help children in developing countries and Seymour Papert and I worked in Pakistan, Senegal, and Colombia. While the Media Lab was being built as an entity

That's fine. I'll be offensive and you can be naive. If you find that trust and honesty and integrity is high on everyone's list all around the world, then go ahead and send out all the electronics and money you want all around the world. It's your money.

Just another consumerism device. Not a device for teaching kids how to create.

A device that would actually be useful is a device that can be used to interface with the environment through sensors and be programmable to solve real world problems.

OLPC should be working with the Raspberry Pi people to create a rugged cheap complete solution. Change the flimsy GPIO Pins to a standard Parallel connector and enclose it with a decent LCD screen with keyboard and USB mouse and you'd have a far more useful and pro

OLPC should be working with the Raspberry Pi people to create a rugged cheap complete solution. Change the flimsy GPIO Pins to a standard Parallel connector and enclose it with a decent LCD screen with keyboard and USB mouse and you'd have a far more useful and productive device.

You seem very confused. The Rasberry Pi people made something that people actually wanted. That's how they achieved success. But that is the evil capitalistic way of doing things.

Think about this: I am a highschool drop out from an abusive home. I had to leave to avoid further abuse. Having access to computers in elementary school and at home I had taught myself to program and was making money selling my wares on Compuserve. It wasn't enough to support me, and I couldn't take my PC with me anyway on the streets -- Had I a laptop or Internet cafe I would have at least been able to feed myself while remaining homeless. The homeless shelters were a bad idea -- Upon leaving I was mu

The serious answer to this is "that doesn't count". Yes, a computer was useful to you personally because you ended up becoming a programmer. Giving out computers on those grounds is like giving out Barbie dolls on the grounds that one of them might get a job as a Barbie doll toy designer.

The whole idea of giving them stuff is that they are going to use the freebies as general tools, not so that they could become specialists in the jobs associated with the freebies. Yes, it would have worked in your case,

My favorite part from TFA:In this case the XO is sporting parental controls that track usage and learning styles. The tablet also has a Journal app that details and breaks all this down for the parents

If anyone believes the information is "for the parents" I have some nice property to sell about 200 miles north of here [google.com] depending on the tide and winds.